Then, as if with a snap, Mae’s eyes opened and she gave a shuddering gasp.
Her arms flailed around. She looked like she was trying to bolt. Just hearing the sound of her frantic cry was enough to make Shaun reach out, attempting to force her to see that he was there. That everything was alright.
“Mae — Mae! It’s me. I’m here. Hey!”
She practically wrenched herself from his grasp and jumped to her feet, moving in a flash until she was pressed against the wall. Every breath was shuddering. Shaun could see the whites of her eyes as she looked in all directions at her surroundings.
Then she focused on Shaun and her rigid posture collapsed. Shaun hurried forward to catch her as she practically fell to the floor.
“Mae!” He guided her to the glossy floor and allowed her to catch her breath. “Are you alright?”
She ignored this question. Instead she gave one of her own.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in the space ship,” he answered.
“She brought us here…” Again her eyes scanned the room. “Zolyn. Where is she now?”
“Gone out. We need to leave. I was only able to escape because Xara was here.”
“Xara?” Mae’s expression softened. “Where is she?”
Shaun pointed to the floor beside them with a grim expression.
“There. She’s dead. At least I think she is.”
There were no lights on when it came to the many pieces that comprised Xara’s alien body. They were dark and scattered all over the floor. One piece in particular that stuck out to Shaun was the middle sphere which Zolyn had reached out and squeezed until it burst. That was the killing blow.
Shaun reached down and retrieved the piece.
“This was her heart, I think. I don’t know much about their bodies. All I know is that Zolyn attacked, and once the light went out on this sphere…everything went dead.”
He held it out for Mae to see. She didn’t touch it, however. Shaun knew that this was because she was afraid of having a vision. Sometimes touching things allowed her to see flashes of various events and information that would otherwise be locked within a memory.
Mae held up one hand, keeping Shaun’s attention.
“I know what you need me to do,” she said. “That piece holds secrets. But I can’t do it. Not yet…after what I just went through…”
“It’s fine,” Shaun reassured her. “I’ll hold onto it for now. We don’t have to do that right this moment. For now, we need to get out of here. Great — there’s my visor.”
He saw his equipment on another platform behind his steel restraints. It wasn’t damaged, thankfully, and he put it on to make sure it still worked.
“Perfect,” he said, turning back to Mae. “Ready to get out of here? I’m not sure how much time we have before Zolyn gets back.”
Mae nodded. “What’s the plan?”
“I want to get back to my house and make sure that Mom and Neil are alright,” he told her as they moved to the exit. “And if they are, we’re going to drive the hell out of the city.”
“But, to where?”
They paused, listening. Mae scanned with her powers to see if Zolyn was anywhere nearby. After a few seconds, she shook her head, verifying that they were clear.
“We’re going to Maine,” Shaun answered. “To the one place that we might be safe for a while. The woods around my grandparent’s house.”
It was the best shot they had. Whatever happened Shaun knew that they couldn’t stay in the city. It was like a death trap. Everyone was concentrated in one place.
Being in the country with houses spread out and plenty of woods to break things up sounded like the best idea to Shaun.
Mae glanced at him as they hurried down a corridor, stopping at an intersection with another corridor. Could their escape be at the end of this? Shaun could only hope.
“You’re sure that they weren’t taken along with us?” Mae asked, referring to his mother and Neil.
“If they were,” he said, “we would have seen them. If they’re not at the house, then I’m going to speed back here and tear this place apart until I find them. I just hope that it doesn’t come to that.”
Mae nodded. “I don’t sense them here, if that’s any consolation.”
“That’s perfect consolation,” Shaun said, leading them to the end of the second corridor. To his relief they came to an open doorway which led them to the crumpled pier. “And now we have our exit. Grab on. I’m speeding us out of here.”
20
Northern Territory
The drive north to Shaun’s grandparent’s property was excruciatingly long, not only because of the flood of cars trying to get out of the city, but also because Shaun felt as if he had painted a target on all of their backs.
What would normally have taken two hours actually took four and a half hours. It was after midnight when at last they reached Maine. Mae actually gave a sigh of relief when they passed the well-worn sign announcing that they had crossed the border.
Traffic started to become lighter, and they made better time, managing at last to get off at one of the exits and continue the remainder of their journey on some country roads. The change of scenery was enough to lower some of Shaun’s anxiety a bit. Zolyn might be able to track the Vestige, but how precise was that tracking? If they weren’t in a densely populated place like Boston, did that mean they were harder to track? Considering how small a big city was when you were trying to hide from a scan, or avoid being spotted, Shaun and Mae agreed that staying in the country for at least a day or two would buy them some time.
“I think this is our best option,” Mae said as they passed by a field of tall grass with the twinkling outline of a farmhouse out in the middle of it. Shaun wondered if these people knew about what was happening in Boston. Was the news all over it? Did these people have themselves tuned in to the updates on their phones and other devices? If they were, then the exterior of their homes betrayed all sense of panic.
Mae reached over and rested a hand on Shaun’s arm as he drove. When he glanced over at her, he saw that she was giving him an exhausted and pleading look. He settled back into his seat and nodded.
“Agreed. I just hope that we can stretch this as much as possible before we’re found. And that we don’t lead Zolyn to my grandparents’ house.”
“We will have a contingency plan,” Mae reassured him. “Your grandparents are used to this by now, aren’t they? You fought The Drone in their back yard. Surely they must have an underground shelter they can go to by now?”
This actually got a genuine laugh out of Shaun.
“I don’t think they have anything as elaborate as that,” he replied. “But, there’s an easier escape if they need to flee with my mother and Neil than if we were stuck in Boston. Everything is spread out, so there are plenty of places to hide.”
He shook his head. Hiding. That was the last thing that would have been on his mind just a day ago. The only thing that he would have had to hide was his identity from the public, and that was just part of his daily routine.
Glancing in his rearview mirror he laid his eyes on his mother and Neil. They were both still out of it. Mae had given them each an aspirin and water for their aches and pains, and thankfully neither of them had been seriously injured aside from being knocked around. It was also lucky that they hadn’t seen Shaun’s or Mae’s abilities in action because Shaun didn’t want to explain all about his life to his mother right now with everything else going on.
The world at large is already falling apart, thought Shaun. Does my family life have to fall apart at the same time?
For now, his mother and Neil were sleeping against each other. Neil had managed to wake up enough to slide his arm around Mrs. Boding before falling back into his slumber.
Mae was also looking back at the two of them. She smiled faintly.
“We all need to regain our energy,” she said. “Rest will help with that.”
“
That’s what scares me,” said Shaun, slowing the car so that he could make a turn onto a winding back road through more farmland. “Resting is exactly what Zolyn wants us to do. We’re going to be used as Aberrant batteries. Charged up, then used up, over and over until there’s nothing left. Then she will move on to the next victim.”
“She told you this?”
Shaun simply nodded, gripping the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles shone white in the dim light of the car.
Mae groaned and rolled her eyes.
“What is it with these terrible villains and always telling us their plans? You’d think they would be quiet and just get on with it.”
“Well,” Shaun replied with a side grin. “If you were essentially the last one of your kind and had nobody to talk to but yourself for who knows how long, wouldn’t you be chatty the first moment you found someone who would listen to you? And I was forced to listen!”
This got a chuckle out of Mae.
“I guess that’s true. Still, it’s kind of stupid.”
There was a lull in their conversation, overlaid by the hum of the car engine and the crunching of bits of loose tar and gravel on the roadway. Then Shaun added, “She was telling me all of this because she knew that it would hurt me and bring my morale down. When she explained it, she was doing the first energy extraction on you.”
Mae’s shoulders slumped and she blinked a few times.
“That’s when I was knocked unconscious,” she muttered.
“Yeah.”
She returned to watching the scenery passing them by for a couple of minutes. The silence was painful because they both knew the stakes of this game. It was their very lives, and the lives of those they loved, that would be impacted if Zolyn was able to succeed.
Finally Mae pressed her lips together and raised her eyebrows.
“We will find a way to stop this,” she said.
“How?”
It was an involuntary reaction for Shaun, but stating the obvious didn’t dismay his partner.
“Well, for one, I’ve got my visions. Those have to count for something. And for another, you’ve seen how some of this alien tech works. Together we should be able to figure out a way to corner Zolyn and trap her before she can bash us into oblivion.”
“That’s the thing, though,” said Shaun. “She won’t bash us into oblivion. I wonder if she will go easy on us because she doesn’t want to ruin her chances of using us as sources of easy energy. Let’s face it. You and I are proven Aberrant powers. And we found that out on our own — honed our own abilities. Now, if Zolyn loses us, that means she has to start from scratch to find someone else on the planet who has as much power as we do after a good chunk of time where we developed our power levels.”
“So, you think she won’t fight back against us?”
Shaun shrugged. “Maybe not fight, but she definitely wants to get us back into her alien prison. And until she can do that, she’s going to turn to others. I already know that she’s made contact with Austin Spencer.”
“The Cloak…” Mae glanced away, contemplating this news. “Do you think he’s already on her side?”
“If it gets him out of prison,” Shaun mused. “Maybe. We have to be prepared for anything.”
The Boding homestead was a welcome sight when they pulled into the driveway. The long porch, nicely trimmed lawn, and the lake in the background was enough to give Shaun a sense of calm as memories of childhood and staying with his grandparents for vacations flooded his mind.
There was only one light on at the house, and that was the porch light, welcoming them. Ed and Terry had no idea that Shaun and the rest of the group were going to arrive, so Shaun wondered how this was going to be received. A quick explanation would get his grandparents up to speed. They had seen some bizarre things since Shaun had inherited the Vestige. It was clear that their journey through the unknown realms of sci-fi weren’t over any time soon.
“Alright, here we go,” said Shaun as he got out of the car and helped carry his mother up to the front porch. Mae hurried ahead to get the door.
“Do you have keys?” she asked.
“Yeah, they’re in my pocket. Grab them…”
Mae reached into his pocket and pulled out the good-sized key ring. It had the key for everything in his life on it, including his office and more than a few lock boxes. Shaun instructed Mae on which one to use and within moments they were inside the house and moving as quietly as possible to avoid waking up his grandparents.
Shaun laid his mother on the couch in the living room, then returned to the car to get Neil. It was a bit more of a struggle since Neil was heavier than his mother, but Shaun managed, and once they were all inside, with Neil sat down on the comfortable armchair, Shaun and Mae both looked over at the love seat and collapsed into it.
“Finally,” said Shaun as he wrapped an arm around Mae, pulling him against her. “This feels like normal.”
“Do you think we should go tell your grandparents that we’re here?” she asked, looking up at Shaun.
A yawn tore through his lungs and out through his mouth as he shook his head.
“Let’s wait until morning,” he said. “They’ll find us down here either way. I don’t think I can keep my eyes open…”
Those words were truer than he thought because he had barely let the words slip from his mouth when sleep overtook him. It was the first comfort that he had experienced since their dinner had been interrupted.
He wished it had been a dreamless sleep, but as with all times of stress, his dreams were plagued with various images relating to what they were going through. Great clouds of metallic alien beings came over the mountains in the distance, blurred as they moved swiftly. There was a flash, then the house was surrounded. Shaun tried to cry out, to warn his family, but he found that he had no voice.
This can’t be happening! his mind told him. Even in his dreams he had a sense of logic. How could Zolyn have found them so quickly? How fast could she fly with just her body, and when did she run out of energy and have to recharge, as they all had to, with rest?
Those were answers that he didn’t have.
There was a terrible laughter, the kind that he had heard from Zolyn, that rang in his ears before he was awoken by the sound of glass shattering.
“Wha- what’s going on?” he said, practically jumping out of his skin and startling Mae awake as well.
As he blinked in the daylight that streamed through the curtained windows he focused on the image of his grandmother standing in the entrance to the living room. She had been holding a cup of tea before the sight of her family crashed on the furniture startled her so much that she dropped the cup and it shattered on the floor in front of her. Bits of porcelain and a puddle of dark tea spread across the hardwood finish.
“Shaun?” said Terry, his grandmother, with a stunned expression. “What are you all doing here?”
“We got here early this morning,” Shaun explained, extracting himself from the love seat so that he could get up and stretch. The memory of his wounds from the night before returned like a tidal wave, and he stumbled on his feet. One of his arms had lost its circulation, so he felt like a blundering wanderer, unsure of his footing.
“Woah — easy there!” said a very comforting voice as his grandfather, Ed, came into the room to see what the commotion was all about. When he spotted Shaun about to fall over, Ed hurried forward and caught him with a firm grip that went against his old figure. Ed Boding was strong for his age, and a man who was used to doing things for himself.
“Am I glad to see you, Grandpa,” said Shaun.
“I’m alive and well,” said Ed. “I can’t say the same about you four. What’s going on?”
“Haven’t you seen the news?” asked Mae as she got up to stand beside Shaun and join the conversation properly.
Terry gave her a sympathetic smile.
“You know that Ed and I don’t listen to the news before we go to bed,” she replied. “If it
doesn’t affect us here in the woods, then it can wait until morning.” She paused, surveying them all. “Should I be worried?”
“We snuck into your house when you were asleep, after midnight,” said Shaun. “I think if you were going to be worried, now is the time to be.”
21
A Brief Recharge
Shaun’s grandparents didn’t waste any time in assessing the state of their family. His grandfather, Ed, simply stood with his arms crossed and his head shaking.
“What’s new under the sun?” asked Ed with more than a hint of irony. He watched as his wife, Terry, stepped over the broken cup to attend first to Mrs. Boding, then to Neil.
“Lisa? Are you alright, honey?”
It took a few rubs of the shoulder to get Mrs. Boding’s attention, but at last she was awake with more than a hint of confusion etched on her face.
“Terry?” she muttered, her voice thick with sleep. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re at Grandma’s house, Mom,” said Shaun gently. “I drove us here last night.”
“Was I knocked out?” She looked to either side, spotted Neil, and reached out to touch him. It was as if she were checking to make sure this wasn’t some sort of dream or nightmare.
“I think we all were knocked out,” said Mae. “For a bit. Thankfully Shaun was able to pull us all out of there.” It was a lie, but an essential lie.
Neil was now awake, just as concerned about his whereabouts as Mrs. Boding.
“Are the aliens gone?” he asked after he was certain that Mrs. Boding was fine.
Terry shot her husband a look. “Aliens? What’s this all about?”
Ed pointed to the flat screen TV mounted to the wall. “Turn on the news. I suppose it can explain things quicker than Shaun can, and it will save everyone some breath.” This was the point in their visit where everything that Ed said had to be filtered through a system of “who knows what” in the family. While Shaun’s grandparents knew about his and Mae’s Aberrant abilities, Mrs. Boding and Neil were oblivious. That meant things needed to be tread on lightly.
The Aberrant Series (Book 4): Super Invasion Page 13
